Members of Britain’s Parliament are
pressuring U.K. judges to reveal the identities of celebrities
and executives who win court orders barring the media from
reporting on their alleged indiscretions.

Lawmakers this month cited legislative “privilege” when,
during open sessions of Parliament, they identified former Royal
Bank of Scotland Group Plc Chief Executive Officer Fred Goodwin
and Ryan Giggs, a soccer player for Manchester United, in
relation to injunctions they had won. The lawmakers’ actions
suggest a war is brewing between Parliament and the courts over
such orders, said London lawyer Niri Shan.

“It’s a farcical situation,” Shan, who heads the media
practice at Taylor Wessing LLP, said yesterday in a phone
interview. “The judge is saying one thing and people are
popping up in Parliament and saying another. It’s a battle
between Parliament and the courts.”

So-called super-injunctions typically prevent the media
from writing about celebrity infidelities and may bar them from
reporting the gag order exists. While lawmakers have taken to
the floor of the House of Commons to skirt the rulings, users of
Twitter Inc.’s social-networking website have posted names of
celebrities protected by the injunctions.

John Hemming, a Liberal Democrat member of Parliament,
yesterday said Giggs’s name during a debate on injunction
disputes, prompting the House of Commons Speaker to interrupt
him and stop the lawmaker from continuing.

‘About 75,000 People’

“With about 75,000 people having named Ryan Giggs on
Twitter it is obviously impracticable to imprison them all,”
Hemming said during the session. The online postings have
repeatedly been cited in court as reasons to lift the
injunctions.

“No member of Parliament should take it upon his or
herself to name names without having read all the facts,” said
Rod Dadak, a defamation lawyer at Lewis Silkin in London. Some
lawmakers are “opportunistic” and seek to “use their
privilege in entirely the wrong way.”

Ben Stoneham, a Liberal Democrat member of the upper House
of Lords, said in Parliament last week that Goodwin’s injunction
related to a relationship with a “senior colleague.” Hemmings
disclosed the existence of the injunction in March, saying
the court order prevented Goodwin from being identified as a
banker.

Goodwin’s Injunction

The Parliamentary statements have had mixed results with
the courts. Goodwin’s injunction was lifted to allow his
identity to be disclosed. Two judges denied media requests to
lift Giggs’s injunction after a Scottish newspaper and a
lawmaker made disclosures.

News Corp. (NWSA)’s U.K. unit had asked the court to lift the ban
so its Sun newspaper could openly write about the reasons behind
the Giggs injunction. Media outlets argue the injunction is
unsustainable.

There is no legitimate public interest in “kiss-and-tell”
stories about soccer players and judges shouldn’t give in when
their orders are defied, said Andrew Terry, a media and
defamation lawyer with Eversheds LLP in London.

“Even though Ryan Giggs’s name may be widely publicized,
whether in defiance by MPs and via Twitter or eventually by
permission of the courts, that does not mean that his private
life is now fair game,” Terry said.

‘Flouting’ Court Order

Two senior U.K. judges who last week delivered a report on
super-injunctions, questioned whether “it is a very good idea
for our lawmakers to be in effect flouting a court order just
because they disagree with the order.”

“It is a very serious issue, in my view,” Chief Justice
Igor Judge told reporters. “We are following the law as best we
understand it.

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron will establish a joint
committee of both the House of Commons and the House of
Lords to review U.K. privacy laws, Attorney General Dominic Grieve said. The committee will “establish how matters can be
improved,” Grieve told lawmakers in London today.

The number of gag orders has risen since Formula One
President Max Mosley won a ruling in 2008 that his privacy was
violated by a story in the News of the World about a Nazi-themed
sex party. One lawmaker estimated last month that more than 30
of the so-called super-injunctions had been issued.